Behavioral targeting (BT) is an advertising methodology in which an advertiser’s pitch is shown to users based on the sites they visit and/or what the user does on those sites.

A network or publisher creates behavioral segments based on where the user has gone and/or what they have done on various web pages. These are typically broad based descriptions like “Travel Shoppers” or “Auto Enthusiasts”, but they can also be very specific to an advertiser like “Users who put items in their shopping cart, but did not check out”. Another example is a segment based on users who have searched for an advertiser’s company name or product name. Behavioural advertising, I would contend will eventually merge with neural advertising to eliminate the notion of intrusive, irrelevant content. Next step will be the total syncronization of behaviour, context and role in the field of commercial online marketing. Open AdExchange, http://openadex.com/beta/, is the first attempt to woo quality publishers to share content in an open behavioural network and is currently under beta test in Denmark. It will be exciting to watch the performance of this vehicle of relevancy in the coming months.

Social Media will overtake other choices of digital marketing such as the company website. Ian Jindal of Internet Retailing made this patently clear yesterday at FDIH event Business in Facebook

The idea of social networks used for commerce is gaining headwind, and in the next two years may become more powerful than corporate Web sites and customer relationship management software, according to Forrester. Social media in the U.S. will contribute to an increase from $716 million this year to more than $3.1 billion in 2014, a 34% compound annual growth rate. Social media spending will grow faster than spending on other interactive marketing channels, which will grow at a 17% CAGR. For consumer-facing companies, that means tapping into consumers’ increasing expectation that they will participate with your brand. For b-to-b firms, it means leveraging the power of innovative customers who are increasingly engaging with their peers to solve their problems.

Singularity n. A point of infinite density and infinitesimal volume, at which space and time become infinitely distorted according to the theory of General Relativity. According to the big bang theory, a gravitational singularity existed at the beginning of the universe. Singularities are also believed to exist at the centre of black holes.

Niels B Christiansen, President of Danfoss, the environmentally conservative company explained it was important for him to drive his Porche Cayenne 4,2 V8 Turbo as a signal value for Danfoss customers. Peter Friis the local Google Sales Director in the Nordic region has doubtlessly the same signal value for clients in mind when he parks his Google Bicycle alongside the environmentally conscious company leaders, and signs contracts for millions.

Bernstein Research predicts a 20% to 30% drop in 2009 TV station ad revenues. This morning Lars Thunø, research director at DR delightedly explained in Berlingske how Danes are spending 3.5 hours per day stuck to the TV box. The same people according to the data, spend just under an hour on the computer per day, and the conclusion was obvious: advertisers should spend more on TV advertising than on line!.

What was not highlighted was the fact that TV viewers on average spend under one hour on all three public services DR channels combined, and without any advertising. The time for TV advertisers is split between state owned TV2 channels and others. This is an increasingly fragmented broadcast TV market, where coincidentally a significant viewer population either multitask with mobiles and gaming consols, or engage in ad- skipping. Granted TV broadcasting can be communal as when we watch a football match or movie, but even here this happens at most once a week in the average household.

TV is more a background phenomenon today, much like radio or furniture and art on the wall. Engaged dialogue is effectively a web or mobile experience where the user is fully conscious of the interaction and advertising works when the user chooses to make it relevant, otherwise ads will not exist. Give me one hour of focused interaction per day rather than 3 hours of background noise!

Corporate Social Responsibility is the new Mantra of the big wheelers. Annette Stube, Director for CSR at AP Møller Mærsk let it be known yesterday at the venerable Headquarters of AP Møller in Copenhagen; all corporate decisions would be viewed in a socially moral context for the group of 110.000 employees worldwide. Head of Group for the Environment, Joseph Nazareth, declared all environmental decisions would be scrutinized for growth through the environment; and described the climatic challenge as a business opportunity. This is Denmark’s largest company with shipping and oil exploration interests. Particularly the media was singled out as a target ‘stakeholder’ with specific mention of tabloid newspapers, where socially critical stories must be managed. The Web, well she had no idea how to tackle this, and, yes she had heard of social networks. But what to do about them, the jury is out! I believe this to be fairly representative of the way large companies view their social environment. With more than 1.8 million Danes engaging on Facebook with all kinds of social concerns (the highest in the world for any nation on Facebook), here we have a major global corporation worried about a paper tabloid that sells less than 100k copies per day. OK what an opportunity to get with it!

‘the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience, than in the legacy media’ (top 10 has more traffic than following 90 sites together!) ‘Online, the problem is that the revenue model is in search, not conventional advertising’ (Banner is dying!) ‘blogs and public affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists’ (the long tail is infinite!).

Well it is a new oligarchy replacing publishers, get over it. As I recall the monks and monasteries of Europe were replaced by publishers and printers and I didn’t hear anyone screaming. The revenue model is in search, but far more relevant is the revenue model in contextualization and personalization. Lets treat people as individuals rather than a mass sycophantic segmented mob!

Bloggers like me are just an elite as any other elite, except we choose ourselves, rather than somebody else doing it for us. However, there are more than 200 million of us compared to just 50 million legacy media websites. We win on democratization of the oligarchy.

Dr. Eric Clemons from the Wharton School of Business is absolutely correct in his observations of push and unwarrented intrusive advertising.http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/22/why-advertising-is-failing-on-the-internet/
However he misses the central point which is synchronicity and contextuality of content. With rudimentary geo-positioning functionality and profiling, the whole concept of advertising will gradually morph into content relevance. In many ways similar to good old James Bond movies promoting in- movie branding, so our reading contextualization will sharpen ads. The only issue remaining is monitization of non paying ads and I believe Pricerunner.com has solved this to the satisfaction of readers. Not rocket science!

I met with several media players today and to say it politely all of them are seeking new income streams to compensate for declining fortunes of existing publications; daily newspapers, magazines, TV channels. My goodness now is the time to move forward with non- invasive intelligent contextual advertising on the web with quality publishers of content. Let’s face it the ‘long tail’ espoused by Tim O’Reilly and exploited to the nth degree by Google has failed to incorporate content of major publishers around the globe. It has focused first on ‘user generated’ content, which is great, but what about ‘professional’ content? Surely a merger of these great content creators, ‘user’ and ‘professional’ is the optimum way forward in an open context! Yes we are waiting.